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No institution in the life
of early Boston played a more important part in promoting the break
with the
mother-country than the tavern.1
The attitude of a man towards
England soon came to be known by the public house where he spent his
evenings,
and from the time of the establishment of the Royal Exchange (1711),
which
stood on the southwest corner of Exchange and State street, a line of
cleavage
between kingsmen and others was faintly to be discerned. When Luke
Vardy became
landlord here the place took on the colour which has made it famous. It
was
then the resort of all the young bloods of the town, who, brave in
velvet and
ruffles, in powdered hair and periwigs, swore by the king and drank
deep
draughts of life and liquor. This tavern was distinctly the resort of
the
British officers and many an international romance is connected with
the house,
— notably that of Susanna Sheafe (eldest daughter of the
Deputy), and the
dashing Captain Ponsonby Molesworth, whom the maiden saw marching by
with his
soldiers as she stood in the balcony of the inn. Molesworth was
immediately
captivated by her beauty and pointing her out to a brother
officer exclaimed,
"Jove! that girl seals my fate!" She did, very soon after, a
clergyman assisting.
The Bunch of Grapes, too,
though later associated with many a Revolutionary feast, was,
in the early
part of the eighteenth century, a favourite resort of the royal
representatives. It stood on what is now the west corner of Kilby
street, on
State street, and hither Governor William Burnet was
enthusiastically escorted
by a large body of citizens upon his arrival in 1728. Governor Pownall,
too,
frequented the house, and there is a pleasant story of a kiss
which he once
delivered, standing on a chair there. Pownall was a short,
corpulent person
but a great ladies' man, and it was his habit to salute every woman to
whom he
was introduced with a sounding smack upon the cheek. One day a tall
dame was
presented and he requested her to stoop to meet his proffered
courtesy.
"Nay, I'll stoop to no man, not even to your Excellency," exclaimed
the lady, with a haughty toss of her head. "Then I'll stoop to you,
madam," readily retorted the gallant governor, and springing to a chair
beside
her he bent over to do his obeisance.
Ere long, however, there
came a time when a scarlet coat was an inflammatory signal in the
tap-room of
this inn. Pownall was rather less to blame for this, though, than any
of the
governors who had preceded him. Our gallant hero had been in Boston
twice
before, in the employ of Shirley, before he came to the town
as governor
(August 3, 1757), and he really had an intelligent idea of the
underlying
causes of the then smouldering American resentment. To be sure, he
stood calmly
and firmly for the prerogative of the king; but he appears to
have divined
tendencies, already at work, towards throwing off the yoke of royalty.
At his
own request, he was recalled, after a short term of service, and it so
happened
that from 1768-1780 he was a member of Parliament. Thus he was
able to use, in
our behalf, the experience he had gained while here. But his
advice and
protests were not regarded in England and he lived to see us take a
place among
the nations in fulfilment; of his own prophecies. After Pownall had
sailed back
to England (June 3, 1760) Thomas Hutchinson, the
lieutenant-governor, had a
chance to try his hand at the helm. To relieve him there soon came Sir
Francis
Bernard, who seems to have been, personally, a very delightful
gentleman, but
who, as the king's representative, had a most unhappy time of it while
in
Boston. Before his appointment to Massachusetts Bernard had been the
successful
administrator of affairs in New Jersey and he had high hopes,
therefore, of
getting on well with the Puritans. Writing to Lord Barrington of the
matter he
said, "As for the people, I am assured that I may depend upon a quiet
and
easy administration. I shall have no points of government to dispute
about, no
schemes of self-interest to pursue. The people are well disposed to
live upon
good terms with the Governor and with one another; and I hope I may not
want to
be directed by a junto or supported by a party; and that I shall find
there, as
I have done here, that plain-dealing, integrity and
disinterestedness make the
best system of policy."
This optimistic vision was
destined speedily to be dispelled by the facts. Though he was met, near
Dedham,
on his journey from New Jersey, by a number of gentlemen in "coaches
and
chariots," the new governor had hardly reached the seat of his province
when things began to look blue for him. In his first speech to the
Assembly
(which came immediately after the fall of Montreal), he maladroitly put
his
hearers in mind of the blessings they derived from their
"subjection to
Great Britain, without which they could not now have been a free,
people; for
no other power on earth could have delivered them from the power they
had to
contend with." Hutchinson, in his narrative of this and
succeeding events
relates that "the Council, in their address, acknowledge that to their
relation to Great Britain they owe their present freedom.... The House,
without
scrupling to make in express words the acknowledgement of their
subjection,
nevertheless explain the nature of it. They are 'sensible of the
blessings
derived to the British Colonies from their subjection to Great Britain;
and the
whole world must be sensible of the blessings derived to Great
Britain from
the loyalty of the Colonies in general, and for the efforts of
this province
in particular; which, for more than a century past, has been wading in
blood
and laden with the expenses of repelling the common enemy; without
which effort
Great Britain, at this day, might have had no Colonies to defend.'"
Sir Francis Bernard
The
truth was that gratitude to Great Britain was
an emotion very remote, just then, from the mind of Boston. For two
enactments
of long standing, — but which, from disuse, had not hitherto
been oppressive, —
were now being very unpleasantly brought home to the people. The
Navigation Act
of Charles II and the Sugar Act of 1733 had been far from
acceptable to the New
Englanders, but so long as there seemed slight disposition to enforce
these
statutes nobody minded them much. Then Pitt fell, and there came into
power new
men who were only creatures of the young king (George III), —
and an era of
experimentation, so far as the colonies was concerned, was
immediately
inaugurated.
Governor Bernard was
especially instructed to see that the decrees of the English Board of
Trade in
regard to the collection of duties and the restriction of commerce were
enforced. He therefore ranged himself with Hutchinson and Charles
Paxton when
there came a question of assisting customs officers in the execution of
their
duty. Hutchinson, as it happened, was Chief-justice of the superior
court as
well as lieutenant-governor, and it was, therefore, within his power to
issue
what came to be known as the Writs of Assistance, permits by means of
which
officers could forcibly enter dwelling-houses, stores and warehouses in
search
of goods which they believed, rightly or wrongly, to be smuggled.
Charles
Paxton, head of the Boston Custom House, who instigated the
granting of these
writs, was hung in effigy from the Boston Liberty Tree as a sign of the
hatred
his act inspired in the people. James Otis, on the other hand, a part
of whose
duty as advocate-general it would have been to support the cause of the
customs
officers, resigned his position under the Crown and engaged
himself to argue,
for the suffering merchants of Boston, against the
legality of the writs!
Thus there stepped upon the
stage of the world's history, for the first time, one of the most
brilliant men
America has ever produced. The scene of the now-famous trial, in which
Otis
played so important a part, was the council-chamber of the Old Boston
Town
House, an imposing and elegant apartment at the east end of the
building,
ornamented with fine full-length portraits of Charles II and
James II.
Hutchinson presided and there were also in attendance four associate
judges,
wearing great wigs on their heads and rich scarlet robes upon their
backs.
Thronging the courtroom were the chief citizens and officers of the
Crown, all
of whom well understood that a matter of enormous importance
was to be
debated.
Among the young lawyers who
were present on that important day was John Adams, a fresh-faced youth
who had
come up from his home in Braintree to hear what should be said. In his
old age
he wrote to William Tudor a description of the scene, which brings
vividly
before us the actors and the parts they took: "Round a great fire were
seated
five judges, with Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson at their head as
Chief-Justice, all arrayed in their new fresh rich robes of scarlet
English
broadcloth; in their large cambric bands and immense judicial
wigs. At a long
table were all the barristers-at-law of Boston and of the neighboring
county of
Middlesex, in gowns, bands and tie-wigs. They were not seated
on ivory chairs,
but their dress was more solemn and more pompous than that of the Roman
senate,
when the Gauls broke in upon them. Two portraits of more than full
length of
King Charles the Second and of King James the Second, in splendid
golden frames
were hung up on the most conspicuous sides of the apartment. If my
young eyes
or old memory have not deceived me, these were as fine
pictures as I ever
saw;... they had been sent over without frames in Governor Pownall's
time, but
he was no admirer of Charles or James. The pictures were stowed away in
a
garret among rubbish until Governor Bernard came, who had them cleaned,
superbly framed and placed in council for the admiration and imitation
of all
men, no doubt with the advice and concurrence of Hutchinson and all his
nebula
of stars and satellites."
The case was opened by
Jeremiah Gridley, the king's attorney, who defended the validity of the
writs on
statute law and English practice. To which Oxenbridge Thacher
replied in a
strong legal argument which showed that the rule in English courts did
not
apply to America. Then the Advocate of Freedom began to speak,
confounding all
his opponents by the splendour of his eloquence.
"Otis," says John
Adams, "was a flame of fire. With a plenitude of classical allusions, a
depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and
dates, a profusion
of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eye into futurity, and
a
torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away everything before
him!... Every
man of a crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to
take
arms against writs of assistance.
Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to
the
arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then
and there the child Independence was born!"
For Otis had made a
passionate appeal on the ground of human rights. He had said that the
writs of
assistance were instruments of slavery and villainy, and that he was
standing
there on behalf of English liberties. He declared that a man's
house was his
castle and that this writ destroyed the sacred privilege of domestic
privacy.
Thus for four hours he poured out a stream of eloquence which, if it
did not
avail to convince the Court (who ultimately sustained the
legality of the
writs), served admirably to bring home to the Boston people the rank
iniquity
of taxation without representation. The fight was on!
Governor Bernard did not
appreciate this fact, though, and when he opened the
legislature, the
following autumn, was once more singularly unhappy in his
choice of
speech-making material. For he now recommended the members to
"give no
attention to declamations tending to promote a, suspicion that the
civil rights
of the people were in danger." Otis had just been elected a member of
the
body, and it was, of course, recognized that these words were aimed at
him. The
representatives replied to them with scarcely concealed
resentment. Speedily,
too, Governor Bernard found out that he would have to be very
circumspect in
order to avoid the adverse criticism of this clever lawyer to whom he
had
thrown down the gauntlet.
In the summer of 1762,
during a recess in the sessions of the legislature, Governor
Bernard, with the
approval of the Council, expended a comparatively trifling sum
in fitting out
a vessel with which to quiet the fears of Boston merchants who wished
protection from the French for their fishing-boats off
Newfoundland. Instantly
opponents of the administration remonstrated against his
"unwarranted
outlay." The protest came through a committee of the legislature of
which
Otis was chairman! In the remonstrance it was said that "no necessity
can
be sufficient to justify the House of Representatives in giving up such
a
privilege; for it would be of little consequence to the people
whether they
were subject to George or Lewis, the king of Great Britain or
the French king,
if both were arbitrary, as both would be if both could levy
taxes without a
parliament." When this passage was read out, a member cried "Treason!
treason!" in much the same way that it was cried against Patrick Henry,
three years later. Yet it was only with considerable difficulty that
the
governor prevailed upon the House to expunge the passage in
which the king's
name had been so disloyally introduced. Poor Francis Bernard!
Well must he
have understood, by this time, that Massachusetts was to give him
anything but
"a quiet and easy administration!"
Yet if his official path was
not always smooth, Governor Bernard was made very happy in his home
life and in
his social intercourse. He had three residences, one in Jamaica Plain,
one at
"Castle William" and one, of course, in the Province House. His
youngest daughter, Julia, who was a baby when the family moved
from New Jersey
to Massachusetts, afterwards wrote down, for the information of her
descendants, her recollections of Boston in her girlhood and the
resulting
manuscript is freely quoted in "The Bernards of Abington and Nether
Winchendon" by Mrs. Napier Higgins. From that delightful work I
reproduce
by permission: "During the hot months we resided at the beautiful spot,
Castle William [Castle Island], a high hill rising out of the sea in
the harbor
of Boston, where a residence was always ready for the Governor, a
twelve-oared
barge always at call to convey him backwards and forwards....
"My first recollections
were of the large Government House, with a great number of servants,
some black
slaves and some white free servants; a peculiar state of intercourse
with the
inhabitants, everybody coming to us and we going to nobody, a public
day once a
week, a dinner for gentlemen, and a drawing-room in the
afternoon when all
persons of either sex who wished to pay their respects were introduced,
various
refreshments handed about, and some cards, I can remember. We had a man
cook, a
black, who afterwards came to England with us. My Father had a country
house
also a few miles from Boston....
"The
cold in winter was intense, but calm and
certain; it set in early in November, and continued — a hard
frost, the ground
covered with snow-till perhaps the end of March, when a rapid spring
brought in
a very hot summer. During the winter all carriages were taken
off the wheels
and put upon runners, that is — sledges; and this is the time
they choose of
all others for long journeys and excursions of pleasure. It
was a common thing
to say to a friend: 'Yours are bad roads; I'll come and see you as soon
as the
snow and frost set in.' The travelling is then done with a rapidity and
stillness which makes it necessary for the horses to have bells on
their heads;
and the music, cheerfulness and bustle of a bright winter's day were
truly
amusing and interesting. Open sledges, with perhaps twenty persons, all
gay and
merry, going about the country on parties of pleasure, rendered the
winter a
more animated scene than the hot summers present."
Concerning the house at
Jamaica Plain Miss Bernard wrote that it was built chiefly by her
father
himself and that "there was a considerable range of ground,
and a small
lake [of] about one hundred acres attached to it with a boat on it.... This was called Jamaica
Pond. To this residence we generally moved in May, I think, and here we
enjoyed
ourselves extremely. My Father was always on the wing on
account of his
situation. He had his own carriage and servants, my mother hers; there
was a
town coach and a whiskey for the young men to drive about."
Governor Bernard's personal
appearance is thus described by his daughter: "My Father, though not
tall,
had something dignified and distinguished in his manner; he dressed
superbly
on all public occasions." Of her mother she adds that she was tall and
that "her dresses were ornamented with gold and silver, ermine and fine
American sable." Miss Bernard tells us also that her father
was musical
and sometimes wrote both tune and words for a song he and his friends
would
after enjoy together. His was the age of toasts and it is interesting
to know
that the bitterly-hated royal governor originated the following
amiable
sentiment:
"Here's a health to all
those that we love, Here's a health to all those that love us; Here's a health to all those that love them that love those That love them that love those that love us." |
Events in the mother country
were now taking place, however, which were bound to make
Massachusetts people
hate the royal governor, no matter how engaging that functionary might
be in
his private capacity. Charles Townshend had been made first Lord of
Trade in
England and secretary of the colonies. He proposed to grasp and execute
absolute power of taxation. Whereupon George Grenville came to the
front and
planned a colonial stamp act designed to pay the expenses of the
British army!
Naturally the colonists protested. Yet it was not so much, now
or at any time,
unwillingness to pay their part of England's current expenses as
unwillingness
to help support a government in which they were not represented that we
should
see in ensuing events. "It was not the taxation of the Stamp Act that
alarmed them, but the principle involved in it."
In this "strike"
of the Bostonians as in many a strike since there were —
unfortunately —
outbreaks of mob violence as well as calm and effective opposition. And
the
very men who condemned unlawful measures were credited, just as they
often are
to-day in similar circumstances, with "standing for" the
particular
measure involved. Hutchinson favoured neither the Stamp Act
nor the Sugar Act.
He believed that the government, whose loyal servant he tried
faithfully to be,
was making a great mistake in instituting such measures in the
colonies. But he
regarded with the utmost horror what he saw to be a growing tendency
towards
revolt from the mother-country. His whole attitude in this
matter is expressed
in a quotation which he selected as the title-page motto of his
"History
of the Revolt of the Colonies": "I have nourished children and
brought them up and even they have revolted from me" (Isaiah). In other
words he was a Loyalist in every drop of his blood.
Nobody, however, except
Samuel Adams, looked with favour upon revolt at this stage of the game.
What
Otis and Franklin desired was Parliamentary representation for the
colonies.
But the redoubtable Adams had for twenty years been thinking along
revolutionary lines. When he was graduated from Harvard he had taken
for the
subject of his master's thesis the question, "Whether it Be lawful to
Resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth Cannot
Otherwise Be
Preserved?" and from this beginning he had followed a methodical scheme
of
advance in pursuance of which such men as Otis, John Adams, Dr.
Joseph Warren
and John Hancock were enlisted as his co-workers.
Hutchinson had had the
misfortune to receive an office which James Otis had wished
given to his
father and he never recovered from the idea that all the Otis
opposition was
based upon personal resentment. Otis, on the other hand, was firmly
persuaded
that Hutchinson was a rapacious seeker of power and so failed,
on his part, to
do justice to a strong and commanding personality glad of much work to
do
because conscious of ability to do it. That the brilliant young orator
had a
great principle on his side when he asserted, again and again, that
judicial
and executive power should not be invested in the same person we of
to-day
clearly recognize. But Montesquieu's doctrines are now well-established
where
he was then an author known in America only to Otis and a few choice
others.
So, though Hutchinson was conscious of no offence in
fulfilling at one and the
same time the functions of lieutenant-governor, president of the
Council,
chief justice and judge of probate, Otis could and did make capital out
of his
Pooh-Bah-like personality. The result was that poor
Hutchinson, as we shall
see, had to pay very dearly for his honours.
The hated Stamp Act received
the king's sanction March 22, 1765, and the news of it arrived in
Boston on the
twenty-sixth of the following May. The act was not to be
operative until the
following November, however, so the people had five months in which to
resent
its enaction and plan their modes of resistance. The office of
distributor of
stamps was accepted by Andrew Oliver; he was promptly hung in effigy
from the
branches of the Liberty Tree. Later, on that memorable fourteenth of
August,
the effigy was burned in view of Mr. Oliver's residence and he himself
was set
upon by the crowd. The next day he resigned. It began to be seen that
there
would be no great demand for the stamps. Yet business could not go
legally on
without them. Vessels could not enter or go out of a harbour without
stamped
papers, colleges could not grant their degrees, marriages could not be
made
legal, and newspapers and almanacs would require this "mark of
slavery" ere they could circulate undisturbed.
The Old State House
While feeling was at fever
heat a sermon preached against violence was interpreted by a
half-drunken mob,
who seem to have heard only rumours of it, as urging people forcibly to
resent
the Stamp Act. And then there followed what is, without
exception, the most
disgraceful scene in Boston's history, the outrageous
pillaging of an
official's house by a mob frenzied with liquor. The story as told by
the victim
in his Autobiography is not a bit too prejudiced to be reproduced as
narrative
here:
"To Richard Jackson
"BOSTON,
Aug. 30, 1765.
"MY
DEAR SIR — I came from my house at Milton, the 26th in the
morning. After
dinner it was whispered in town there would be a mob at night, and that
Paxton,
Hallowell, the custom-house, and admiralty officers' houses would be
attacked;
but my friends assured me that the rabble were satisfied with the
insult I had
received and that I was become rather popular. In the evening, whilst I
was at
supper and my children round me, somebody ran in and said the
mob were coming.
I directed my children to fly to a secure place and shut up my house as
I had
done before, intending not to quit it; but my eldest daughter repented
her
leaving me, hastened back, and protested she would not quit the house
unless I
did. I couldn't stand against this and withdrew, with her, to a.
neighboring
house, where I had been but a few minutes before the hellish crew fell
upon my
house with. the rage of devils and in a moment with axes split down the
doors
and entered. My son, being in the great entry, heard them cry: 'Damn
him, he is
upstairs, we'll have him.' Some ran immediately as high as the top of
the
house, others filled the rooms below and cellars, and others remained
without
the house to be employed there.
"Messages soon came,
one after another to the house where I was, to inform me the mob were
coming in
pursuit of me, and I was obliged to retire through yards and gardens to
a house
more remote where I remained until four o'clock by which time one of
the best
finished houses in the Province had nothing remaining
but the bare walls and
floors. Not contented with tearing off all the wainscot and hangings,
and
splitting the doors to pieces, they beat down the partition walls; and
though
that alone cost them near two hours they cut down the cupola or
lanthorn, and
they began to take the slate and boards from the roof, and were
prevented only
by the approaching daylight from a total demolition of the building.
The
garden-house was laid flat and all my trees etc broke down to the
ground.
"Such ruin was never
seen in America. Besides my plate and family pictures,
household furniture of
every kind, my own my children's and servants' apparel, they carried
off about
£900 in money, and emptied the house of everything
whatsoever, except a part
of the kitchen furniture, not leaving a single book or paper in it, and
have
scattered and destroyed all the manuscripts and other papers I had been
collecting
for thirty years together, besides a great number of public papers in
my
custody.
"The evening being warm
I had undressed me and put on a, thin camlet surtout over my waistcoat.
The
next morning, the weather being changed, I had not clothes
enough in my
possession to defend me from the cold, and was obliged to borrow from
my
friends. Many articles of clothing and a good deal of my plate have
since been
picked up in different quarters of the town, but the furniture in
general was
cut to pieces before it was thrown out of the house, and most of the
beds cut
open and the feathers thrown out of the windows. The next evening I
intended
with my children to Milton, but meeting two or three small parties of
the
ruffians, who I suppose had concealed themselves in the
country, and my
coachman hearing one of them say, 'There he is!' my
daughters were terrified
and said they should never be safe, and I was forced to shelter them
that night
at the Castle.
"The encouragers of the
first mob never intended matters should go this length, and the people
in
general expressed the utmost detestation of this unparalleled
outrage, and I
wish they could be convinced what infinite hazard there is of the most
terrible
consequence from such demons, when they are let loose in a
government where
there is not constant authority at hand sufficient to suppress them. I
am told the
government here will make me a compensation for my own and my
family's loss,
which I think cannot be much less than £3000 sterling. I am
not sure that they
will. If they should not it will be too heavy for me, and I must humbly
apply
to his majesty in whose service I am a sufferer; but this and a much
greater
sum would be an insufficient compensation for the constant distress and
anxiety
of mind I have felt for some time past and must feel for months to
come. You
cannot conceive the wretched state we are in. Such is the
resentment of the
people against the Stamp Duty, that there can be no dependence upon the
General
Court to take any steps to enforce, or rather advise to the payment of
it. On
the other hand, such will be the effects of not submitting to
it, that all
trade must cease, all courts fall, and all authority be at an end...."
The picture made in court,
the day following the riot, by the stripped Chief Justice was a very
pathetic
one if we may trust the Diary of Josiah Quincy. The persecuted king's
officer,
clad in tattered and insufficient garments, then protested in language
which
can leave no doubt as to his sincerity, "I call my Maker to witness
that I
never, in New England or Old, in Great Britain or America, neither
directly nor
indirectly was aiding assisting or supporting, — in
the least promoting or
encouraging, — what is commonly called the Stamp Act; but, on
the contrary, did
all in my power and strove as much as in me lay to prevent it."
The mob violence visited
upon Hutchinson was, of course, abhorred by Adams and by the soberer
inhabitants generally. At a meeting held in Faneuil Hall a unanimous
vote was
passed calling upon the selectmen to suppress such disorders in the
future.
Hutchinson, however, states grimly that many of the
immediate actors in the
orgies of the night before were present at this meeting! The Stamp Act
itself
was, of course, roundly denounced on this occasion, notable as
one of the
first through which this fine old landmark came to be identified with
the cause
of liberty. The original building given by Peter Faneuil in 1740 to be
a market-house
and town-hall had burned in 1761, but the edifice had been rebuilt the
following year, and it was, therefore, in the hall substantially as we
know it
to-day (though the place was enlarged in 1805), that Liberty first
found itself.
The beautiful mansion-house of the hall's donor stood On what is now
Tremont
street, opposite the King's Chapel Burial-ground.
As was to be expected no
stamps were sold when November first dawned. The ports were closed,
vessels
could not sail, business was suspended. The news of all this naturally
penetrated speedily to England, where Pitt soon stood up in Parliament
and
declared that he "rejoiced that America had resisted." In May
accordingly there came to Boston news of the Act's repeal and every one
was so
glad of this tidings that no attention was paid to the Declaratory Act
accompanying the revocation, an act of enormous importance, however, in
that it
maintained the Supremacy of Parliament in all cases whatsoever
not only in the
matter of taxation but in that of legislation in general. It was in the
train
of this permissory measure that there followed the first steps of
active
revolution. For Samuel Adams had now been joined in the Assembly by
John
Hancock (who, through the death of his uncle, had just come into the
largest
property in the Province, and was beginning to visit with particular
assiduity
the daughter of Edmund Quincy, now a blooming girl of nineteen).
Confronting
these distinguished "patriots," as they soon came to be called, were
Bernard, Hutchinson and the Olivers, henceforward widely branded by
their
enemies as "Tories."
From this time on the
influence of the chief town in the province grows, day by day, to be
more and
more important. In a speech delivered in Parliament by Colonel
Barré, one of
the staunch friends of Massachusetts, the Bostonians were
characterized as
"Sons of Liberty," and this name was soon adopted by a society
comprising about three hundred active patriots, many of whom
were mechanics
and labouring men. The public gatherings of the society were
held in the open
space around the Liberty Tree, and Samuel Adams was the leading spirit
of all
that went on there and in the private sessions of the club.
Both he and Otis
encouraged the people to celebrations on anniversary days of
significance in
the development of the Revolutionary idea, and at these
gatherings and the
dinners which followed them Bernard and his colleagues were invariably
stigmatized as calumniators of North America and now and then
pronounced
worthy of "strong halters, firm blocks and sharp axes."
Samuel Adams
The people now saw clearly
that they had really gained nothing by the repeal of the Stamp Act
inasmuch as
this hated measure had only given place to Townshend's Bill, so-called,
a
measure levying duty on glass, paper, painters' colours and
tea. In the
excitement following the announcement of this bill's passage
"October 6, 1769. To
Mr. Peter Leitch: I desire to have you send me a blue cloth waistcoat
trimmed
with the same colour, lined, the skirts and facings with effigeen, and
the body
linnen to match the last blue cloath I had from you: — two
under waistcoats or
camisols of warm swansdown, without sleeves, faced with some cheap silk
or
shagg. A suit of Cloathes full-trimmed, the cloath something like the
enclosed
only more of a gray mixture, gold button and hole, but little wadding
lined
with effigeen. I like a wrought or flowered or embroidered bole,
something,
though not exactly, like the hole upon the cloaths of which the pattern
is enclosed;
or, if frogs are worn, I think they look well on the coat; but if it be
quite
irregular I would have neither one nor the other, but such a hole and
button as
are worn. I know a laced coat is more the mode but this is too gay for
me. A
pair of worsted breeches to match the colour, and a pair of black
velvet
breeches and breeches with leather linings. Let them come by the first
ship...."
Hutchinson, though
fifty-nine, and the head of a contumacious people, evidently had a care
to his
personal appearance! In other words he possessed the most important
qualification of a royal governor in the Brocade Age.
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1
For further data on this
subject see "Old New England Inns."